I was stomping around Fair Park Saturday morning, trying to walk off a week’s worth of bad news for what’s left of this leaderless, rudderless town, when it snuck up on me. There are all these green FIFA Fan Festival-thisaway signs planted in the park. Except … wait … they’re all pointing thataway. Toward the Dos Equis Pavilion.
Sure enough. In the shadow of the former Starplex there’s a giant white structure branded “FIFA Store” surrounded by chain link parked in one of those sprawling lots just outside the Fair Park gates. Maybe you knew this already. Maybe they said “parking lot” and I heard “Fair Park.”
A new look for the Old Mill Inn includes a seating area nearly the fireplace next to the fully stocked bar.
Robert Wilonsky/Staff writer
I called a few people. Asked what the what. At which point I got a text from someone who knows Big Tex suggesting I might want to swing by the Old Mill Inn, the 90-year-old, on-and-most-recently-off restaurant modeled after a McKinney flour mill for Texas’ centennial celebration. I was told I would find a familiar face bearing rare good news.
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The name out front was a dead giveaway: “Rousso’s Wine Garden,” said the covering over the bar near the newly built deck adjacent to the patio, now covered with black tables and red umbrellas. As in, Isaac Rousso, the longtime State Fair of Texas concessionaire and many-time Big Tex Choice Award-winner and finalist best known for his deep-fried Cuban roll, State Fair Cookie Fries and cotton candy bacon on a stick.
The good news was plainly evident when I pulled open the unlocked door and found Rousso and workers putting the finishing touches on an Old Mill Inn that hasn’t looked that new — that brightly lit, that freshly scrubbed, that well-stocked — since, I dunno, 1936, maybe?
Isaac Rousso, a Dallas native, behind the fully stocked bar at the Old Mill Inn, which he plans to soft-open on June 9 in advance of FIFA’s Dallas kick-off later this week.
Robert Wilonsky/Staff writer
Rousso, grinning, stuck out his hand, introduced himself and broke the news: He would be reopening the 90-year-old restaurant in time for FIFA’s arrival, with a soft opening scheduled for lunchtime June 9 and a menu full of Cuban sandwiches, bacon burgers and pulled pork. And not only does he plan on keeping it open through the State Fair of Texas, where he has some 10 locations scattered around Fair Park, but he hopes to keep it operating indefinitely.
Assuming it’s a success. And, assuming the city lets him. Which is not a safe assumption, even though Rousso paid for the entire makeover himself.
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“Isaac has sunk his own money into this,” said Brett Wulke, Fair Park’s general manager. “The city has put nothing forward. This is all his doing.”
In a town where everyone’s digging into the city’s couch cushions for loose change, that might be the biggest news in this story: Local Man Bets It All on Fair Park. Riskiest thing to happen at Fair Park since Big Tex took up smoking in October 2012.
Rousso won’t say how much this is costing him. Just … “a lot,” after a long pause. “It’s a substantial amount of money. For anybody. But I did it with love and the belief it’s going to pay off. Don’t you think it’s time? Isn’t it time to be a beacon to bring people down there?”
Long past time, of course. Which is why Park and Recreation officials have spent the last few weeks touting dreams that plant hotels, retail and restaurants at a Fair Park for too long ignored and abused by a private operator finally kicked off the fairgrounds in September. And why Park and Rec is about to look for someone to fill the Cotton Bowl more than just the rare every-now-and-then. And why city and State Fair officials jumped at the chance to reopen the Old Mill Inn.
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The State Fair of Texas opened its archives to the Old Mill Inn, where Big Tex’s belt buckles adorn one of the walls.
Robert Wilonsky/Staff writer
“Breathing life back into the Old Mill Inn continues to demonstrate our commitment to making sure every venue and aspect of Fair Park creates experiences that bring visitors back to Fair Park daily,” said Park and Rec director John Jenkins.
Oak View Group and Fair Park First promised for years to reopen the Old Mill Inn after longtime operator Ed Campbell decamped following COVID. But like everything OVG touched during its disastrous tenure as Fair Park’s operator, the Old Mill fell into disrepair. “Disheartening,” Wulke said.
Rousso, operator of beer gardens throughout the fair, said he just couldn’t take walking past the locked-up Old Mill for another year, so before last year’s State Fair, he asked Wulke what the city planned to do with the building. Wulke said he’d like to reopen it, “but getting a tenant wasn’t at the top of my list.” Rousso reached out again two months ago and said he’s still interested — and would the city mind if he got a jump by operating the Old Mill Inn during FIFA Fan Festival, as it sits halfway between DART’s Fair Park Station and FIFA’s fenced-in event.
“It took me about 30 seconds to think it through,” Wulke said. “Great idea.”
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State Fair officials, too, were eager to get the restaurant reopened, and helped Rousso deal with a janky HVAC and fill its new interior with items from its archives, including photos, programs, keepsakes, even a few of Big Tex’s belt buckles.
FIFA’s Fan Festival isn’t exactly at Fair Park. Near Fair Park, sure. Adjacent, absolutely, But not exactly on Fair Park. More like Fair Parking Lot.
Robert Wilonsky/Staff writer
“It was hard to see such a treasure sit underutilized,” said Karissa Condoianis, the State Fair’s senior vice president of public relations. “The Old Mill Inn is a piece of Dallas history, and my jaw was on the floor at how much work had been done in such a short time. It reflects the best of what happens when people come together to preserve our past.”
The Old Mill Inn’s first iteration was as the Laboratory Kitchens Stone Mill, where flour-makers taste-tested their products during the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition. So the story goes: German carpenters dismantled at least some of the original mid-1880s Burris Mill in McKinney and reassembled it at Fair Park, after which the flour consortium hired Ida Chitwood — who D once called “Dallas’ first ‘super star’ food personality” — to teach cooking and make giveaway biscuits.
In the 1960s, Waco-based Youngblood’s Chicken ran the restaurant and ran year-round newspaper ads for “deliciously tender fried chicken served in a delightful Early American setting.” But as the Dallas Times Herald announced on Sept. 10, 1970, “Mill Goes Mexican” — specifically, one of the four dozen restaurants under the Cuellar family’s El Chico banner.
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That lasted a decade, though the Old Mill Inn remained a destination well into the 1980s. In July 1986, the Herald ran a review recommending its Southern-friend lunch to downtown workers with “clients that are looking for a taste of Texas.” In the late 1990s, Ed Campbell assumed operations lest the Old Mill go dark. But by 2001, he was already lamenting the challenge of operating a restaurant at Fair Park.
The city will officially unveil the sculpture The World is Ours on June 9, when Isaac Rousso will open the doors of his new Old Mill Inn just a few feet away from Big Tex Circle.
Robert Wilonsky/Staff writer
“It’s a great location,” he said in an old video interview. “Unfortunately, a lot of people think of it only as being open during the State Fair, so our challenge is to get people to come out here.”
If Rousso pulls it off, though, there’s no guarantee the city will let him stay. Wulke said that since Rousso stepped up, a handful of other would-be operators, all with South Dallas ties, have said they, too, want to take over the Old Mill Inn, and that the city “can’t promise him anything long-term.” Rousso said that hasn’t stopped him from sinking his own money into a place he has always loved but will never, ever own.
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But it also reminds me why I would never, ever want to get in business with Dallas City Hall, which I fear will somehow find a way to bite the hand that feeds it cotton candy bacon.
“I see the excitement from the State Fair and the city in what we’re building. I just have to hope the community supports us now,” Rousso said. “I guess I felt I had the vision to do it, and I am hopeful and optimistic we can find a way to go through the process the city has for us to do this afterward. We want to be here. And I hope they can see I want to be here.”